Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Alex Landragin's "Crossings"

Alex Landragin is a writer whose fiction explores place, migration and literature's formal potential. He has also worked as a copywriter, travel writer, journalist, librarian, indigenous community worker, wine merchant and musician.

Landragin was born in France and migrated to Australia as a child. He has previously resided in Marseille, Alice Springs, Paris, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington DC. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Landragin's debut novel, Crossings, has three narratives:
The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations.
Here Landragin dreamacasts an adaptation of the novel:
Most of the characters in Crossings appear more than once at different stages of their lives, so until they perfect the technology the movie - or better yet the series - probably can't be made.

But a dream cast would go something like this:

Alula - Auli'i Cravalho

Koahu - James Rolleston

Joubert - Willem Dafoe

Roblet - Sam Neill

Feuille - Philip Seymour Hoffman

Jeanne - Thandie Newton

Baudelaire - Steve Buscemi

Edmonde - anyone, as a mask is required

Mehevi - Temuera Morrison

Mathilde - Olivia Colman

Balthazar - Adrien Brody

Artopoulos - Stephen Fry

Madeleine - Maggie Cheung

Walter - Ed Norton

Chanel - Eva Green

Massu - Ben Whishaw
Visit Alex Landragin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Crossings.

Q&A with Alex Landragin.

--Marshal Zeringue